emotional eating

I am an icu nurse who feels a tremendous amount of anxiety these days about my job. With the storage I worry about patient's dying. I'm stress by the pressure to work short staffed and management putting pressure on us to cut productivity costs. I carry all this home with me and have begun over eating. Especially sugar. It's like once I start I can't stop. I've exercise daily but injuries from work has made me cut down the really hard stuff. I tried yoga, medication, relaxation stuff etc but nothing works to decrease the anxiety except over eating of sugar. When I binge on sugar I feel happy and relaxed. When I don't I feel depressed and anxious. Is there something else I can do besides binging on sugar to deal with the depression an anxiety that comes with nursing these days. I hate to leave bedside.

The pressures of your work situation, and your injury, are all making your life more difficult now, but that is not why you have been eating too much...You have been eating too much because you feel powerless, and that means you need the food trance you described as a time out, and as an illusion that everything is all right...then you are calm, until the next day. That won't work, so you have to learn that you are not really powerless, and there are better ways to handle even this stress. Please look at www. shrinkyourself.com to see if that fits your needs. It is designed to help you regain a new perspective and end the emotional eating habit, slowly, but surely.

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